GENERAL FARM PROGRAM 635 



You have to keep in mind, however, that a large proportion of the 

 wheat crop is grown in areas where rainfall is deticient and we have 

 had very good years from the standpoint of moisture, which has 

 brought up the acreage and brought up the yields. 



In the Great Plains area normally you should summer-fallow, but 

 the increased rainfall the last few years has resulted in a good many 

 farmers getting away from a summer-fallow program and there have 

 been some continuous crops there. If the weather should get back 

 to more nearly normal, there would probably be an increase of summer- 

 fallowing in that area, which would cut down the acreage. It would 

 not cut down the production as much as it would cut down the acreage, 

 because of increased yields on summer-fallow, but my thought is that 

 whether we do it by controls or voluntarv shifts, we probably will 

 not have an outlet for more than 1,000,000,000 or 1,100,000,000 

 bushels of wheat under any sort of picture you could get now. 



One way or another, we will have to get our wheat down to some- 

 thmg like 1,000,000,000 bushels. 



Mr. White. You mean an outlet at a profitable level? 



Mr. Hope. Yes. Of course, j^ou could feed morC; if you got the 

 price down low enough and presumably you could export more at 

 lower prices. 



Mr. White. May I ask the witness a question at that point? 



Mr. Pace. Yes. " 



Mr. White. Mr. Kaseberg, I am a farmer myself. I raise mostly 

 barley at the present time, but my predecessor raised a lot of wheat 

 and I am very much interested in what you have to sa3^ The 

 question occurs to me as to why you are interested in an unprofitable 

 export market. Would it not be better to let more of your land lie 

 fallow for a longer period of time and get a greater production per 

 acre in ensuing years and go for the domestic market, which is 

 profitable? 



Mr. Kasebeeg. You are assuming that when the ground lies 

 fallow it is a conserving practice. It is not. If you had a piece of 

 ground out here and kept it fallow year after year, the fertility in that 

 ground would get to the point where it would raise practically nothing. 



Mr. W^hite. What about cover crop and turning it under? 



Mr. Kaseberg. We have no substitute crops. We have no rain- 

 fall to sustain the crops. 



Mr. White. Your position is a little different from ours in an 

 irrigated area. 



Mr. Kaseberg. We seem to have a region all by itself. Our 

 rainfall comes in the winter months and that is why we can produce 

 wheat on such a low rainfall. 



Mr. White. I know you do not expect the Nation as a whole to 

 adopt aprogram peculiarly fitted to your locality. 



Mr. Kaseberg. Not at all, but we do think that could be applied 

 to wheat when the proper mechanics were worked out on it. We 

 do not think it would work on an over-all program for all crops, but 

 where we just depended on the export market, we feel that it is worthy 

 of consideration. 



I would like to go back to Mr. Sutton's point, as to whether wheat 

 should be maintained at 100 percent of parity. When it gets too 

 high, unless your whole Nation's economy is geared to that point, 



